Matt Gurney: Union warns of a dark day when fighter pilots will scrub dishes

Federal Budget 2012: Unions warn of a dark day when fighter pilots will scrub pots and pans

The first round of federal civil service jobs cuts are expected to start being felt today. The Department of National Defence is feeling it first, with 1,100 civilian positions expected to be cut all across the country. Defence is looking at budget trims of $1.1-billion over three years, and because it is determined to maintain its (already too small) number of uniformed personnel and its current bases and equipment, the difference must necessarily be made up by chopping the civilian staff. This comes after a period of rapid expansion in the civilian workforce of the department — during the war in Afghanistan, the bureaucracy was expanding faster than the army.

Some of that expansion was warranted. The civilian side of Defence had been cut during the Chretien-era “Decade of Darkness,” too, and needed to expand after we went to war in Afghanistan. But the war there is largely over (a training mission continues, but is a smaller, less complex affair). With budgets falling, the non-military support staff is the logical place for the military to start looking for cuts. And any such cuts, contrary to what the President of the Union of National Defence Employees has said, isn’t like to see soldiers serving as dish washers and janitors.

John MacLennan obviously has to speak out on behalf of his members. That’s part of the job when you’re president of a major labour group. You need to do your best to convince the government of the day, or barring that, the public at large, that each and every job held by a member of your union is vital and cannot possibly be done without. When done correctly, sometimes bureaucrats can be sufficiently alarmed, or the public appropriately enraged, that the jobs will be saved in favour of a less contentious cut … or no cuts at all. For public sector unions, that often means warning that the services the public enjoys will be lessened. And, hey, public? You don’t want that, do you?

It’s different for the military, of course. The public won’t be particularly hurt by job cuts at the civilian side of Defence, and Canadian Forces personnel — the ones who will feel the pinch of reduced services — will be grateful that the axe is falling on the civilians and not the military. So MacLennan is trying to raise the alarm by other means: He’s warning Canadians that these cuts will mean that soldiers themselves are left doing the dirty work.

Except … they won’t. As MacLennan’s own union has said, the job cuts are falling across all sectors of Defence’s civilian workforce (and as the National Post has reported, also right across the country, including 361 in Quebec and one poor, solitary soul in Newfoundland, who will hopefully be taken out for a round of drinks tonight). The positions to be attrited include clerical support workers, food service and research and development personnel.

Do these sound like the kind of positions that some CF-18 pilot, submarine captain or artillery gunner is going to suddenly be assigned to? “Johnson! Put down those grenades! And that C8 rifle, too. You’re not going to Afghanistan anymore, son. We need that microwave scrubbed until it shines! Here’s your Javex. Sorry, no gloves, though. Just use your chemical warfare gear.”

Kidding aside, as these positions get trimmed, one of two things will happen. The work will be distributed out among those whose jobs are not cut (which has been the reality in the private sector since the dawn of time). Or the job will simply be attrited and go unfilled. And that will certainly impact our troops, but they’ll adjust. These are the people we send across the world to fight our battles and to protect innocents from the worst that man or nature can do to them. They can handle a little hardship on the base, especially when they know that the alternative is that they go on those missions with less training and less equipment.

And the military knows it. That’s why retired General Andrew Leslie, former head of the Army, recommended last year that National Defence take an axe to its bloated civilian staff so that needed resources would flow to the troops that needed them most, not the civilian support workers. If the head of the Army wasn’t worried about military readiness, there’s no reason (beyond motivated self-interest) that John MacLennan should be, either.